Morning Reading List, 12.11.08

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We’ve got your morning mix of media Muesli after the jump…

Tom Hayden is 69. Max Baucus is 67. John Kerry is 65. Ten years ago, the House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton. Check out today’s White House Photo of the Day from Time. Today’s “Angry Journalist” rant of the day: “Because someone keeps stealing my ideas to make herself look good in front of the boss.”

NewsBlues.com reports that MSNBC Pentagon Correspondent Jeannie Ohm is leaving the cable network after six years.

Nature announced, “Karen Kaplan has joined Nature as assistant editor, covering the international science workforce and workplace issues. She returns to the area after a year as the editor at a business-news publisher in Charleston, S.C. Prior to that, Kaplan was an associate editor at Physics Today and, earlier, an editor at newsletter publisher UCG.”

BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine writes, “Sam Zell’s folly will be the first in a wave of newspaper restructuring and consolidation.”

Scott Rosenberg writes, “The Tribune Company bankruptcy is a sad thing, but it cannot be said to be a surprising thing. Sam Zell’s purchase of the company was a heavily leveraged deal — that means he borrowed a ton of money to pay the previous owners/shareholders and figured he’d pay off the debt with the profits of the newspapers. Only now those profits are tanking (although in fact we’re told that every single Tribune paper is still in the black for the moment) and the credit markets, as you may have heard, are suddenly much less, er, forgiving.”

Los Angeles Times’ Opinion L.A. writes, “CNN’s website is recruiting accounts from iReporters the world over; so many people have video and photo capability in their pockets, thanks to cell phones, that no disaster of any magnitude seems to go unrecorded. But actual reporting another matter. You can’t blame a news operation for wanting the immediacy and the visuals of the moment. And free labor is nothing to turn up your nose at, especially when real-time accounts from around the world make today’s shoestring news operations seem mightier and more bulked-up than they really are.”

THR reports, “Cable TV scored a victory Tuesday when congressional investigators issued a devastating report that accuses FCC chairman Kevin Martin of manipulating data so that he might force changes on the industry.”

A reader tells us, “I’d like to set the record straight on the post U.S. Ewwws. The reason why there was any sort of sewage backup yesterday and thus no drinkable water or usable toilets was because workers were repairing a sinkhole that was forming under the sidewalk in front of the building. That’s right, a sinkhole, was threatening to swallow up the editorial office. Insert witty joke about the future of journalism here.”

Politics Magazine announced, “Campaigns & Elections’ Politics magazine and the Italian Association of Political Consultants today unveiled a new partnership that will ensure political professionals in Italy have full access to the most important resource for political professionals. Under this partnership, all members of the Italian Association of Political and Public Affairs Consultants (AICOP) will receive a subscription to Campaigns & Elections’ Politics magazine. The organizations have agreed to work together to ensure the emerging class of political professionals around the world has an understanding of campaign techniques in the hardest-fought, most creative races in the world.”

Google announced “an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, partnering with publishers to begin digitizing millions of articles from titles as diverse as New York Magazine, Popular Mechanics, and Ebony.”

Naples Daily News reports, “One of the nation’s largest and most recognizable newspaper chains declares bankruptcy. The New York Times mortgages its building. The Miami Herald is up for sale, but nobody’s buying. This specter of mass media uncertainty haunted the discussion at the Sugden Theater in Naples Monday night where the topic was journalism’s future.”

Media Matters has a poll of “the most inane punditry of the 2008 presidential campaign.” Cast your vote here.

“In a Daily Beast exclusive, Jessica Cutler, the former Hill aide behind the explosive ‘Washingtonienne’ sex blog, explains why she gave up the louche life to settle down and get married. (And no, she’s not pregnant.)”

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